


The Christmas Letters

by paperlesscrown



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Christmas, Extensive abuse of literary references, F/M, Fluff, Holidays, Older Bughead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 10:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13522212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperlesscrown/pseuds/paperlesscrown
Summary: Jughead hated Christmas traditions. Until he created his own.





	The Christmas Letters

**Author's Note:**

> This is a super fluffy holiday one-shot, one that I absolutely loved writing for a Tumblr Bughead gift exchange, and hopefully one that you (and everyone else) will enjoy.
> 
> Includes: Lots of literary references, Jughead’s Underwood typewriter, and a super sweet surprise at the end.

Jughead Jones hated Christmas traditions. Every single one of them. The caroling, the mistletoe, the eggnog, the trimming of the tree, and especially all the shitty movie reruns (he tried banning all Christmas films at the Twilight during his time there, but Riverdale nearly rioted and Mayor McCoy had to step in).

He liked playing it off as a Grinch-like aversion to anything bright or merry, but the truth was that Jughead was wary of most traditions. Because what else was tradition other than another accepted standard that he and his family would fail to live up to?

The Joneses were a mess most of the time, but they were particularly terrible at Christmas. Dinner was always a sad affair of whatever his mom could cobble together from the pantry, gifts were off the table because they were always broke, and his dad would always drink himself to a stupor. So he hated the whole thing, but he repressed his sad childhood story, and passed off his hatred of the season as a belief that it was nothing more than a cheap excuse for consumerism and manufactured joy.

But one year, that all changed.

Maybe it was the fact that everything he once held to be true was coming apart at the seams - Riverdale, his family, his relationship with Betty - and he wanted something consistent and hopeful to hold on to. Or maybe it was the vintage Underwood that now sat proudly at his desk, reminding him of his love of words and literature. Either way, that year, when the Black Hood terrorised Riverdale, he caved in: he unwittingly created his own Christmas traditions.

It started when he tried to write again. On Christmas Day, Jughead eagerly sat in front of his new typewriter and rolled in a blank sheet of paper, waiting for inspiration to strike. But it was no use. He’d been so out of touch with his novel for so long that he couldn’t even remember the last thing he wrote for it.

There was an old adage for writers that Jughead liked repeating to himself: write what you know. It was the reason why he wrote about Riverdale to begin with. But lately, he had been so isolated from that Riverdale - the Northside he had grown up with - that writing it seemed like a far-fetched idea.

What did he know now? What could he write about?

The Serpents? Out of the question.

His family? Too miserable.

As snow fell outside, Jughead’s fingers hovered over the typewriter keys, eager to write something, anything.  _What’s the story that I want to tell, the one that’s right under my skin?_

Before he knew it, he was typing out a letter to Betty Cooper.

…

_My beloved,_

_If you were here right now, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’d tell me how I’ve misappropriated that word - “beloved” - in the card that accompanied your Christmas present. It’s obviously a beautiful word on its own, but I could almost hear you in my ear, saying that I’ve missed the point, because the word is used in a tragic sense in Toni Morrison’s novel._

_I want you to know that I totally get that, and perhaps - in this letter that will probably never see the light of day - I could take the opportunity to explain myself._

_I never actually finished the book. It came to me while we were in the middle of being broken up. I knew it was one of your favourites, and one day I came across it in the library. Because I was a sucker for pain, I decided to read it, to try and conjure up a shadow of you to comfort myself._

_…which is essentially what Sethe does in the book, right? She meets this young woman, Beloved, and suddenly decides that it’s the daughter that she murdered as a 2-year-old, and spoils and indulges her. She does this because she feels guilty, and also because she misses her._

_I don’t know how the story ends, but I know this: that book was a poor substitute for you. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t finish it. Because I realised that I wanted the real Betty Cooper, not just her favourite book._

_You are my own beloved - the ghost that I will keep chasing and seeing everywhere until you are mine again._

_Merry Christmas. Although I haven’t said this in a while, it still holds true: I love you._

_Jug._

…

And so began two Christmas traditions for Jughead.

Every year, come holiday season, he would do two things: on Christmas Eve, he would give Betty a book as a Christmas present. Not just any book, but something that reflected her, or the way that he felt about her. Then, on Christmas Day, he would use his typewriter to write her a letter - one that she would never read - and place it in a box he kept hidden in his room.

The books were easy to explain. Growing up, he and Betty had always loved reading. It was a world of their own that excluded Archie, who found reading difficult and uninteresting. But Jughead’s act of giving her books was more than that: it was a way for him to express how he felt about her through the words of others, when he found his own inadequate.

Which explains the letters.

The letters were Jughead’s own postscript, his crib notes for why he had chosen each book and what it represented of his feelings for Betty. She didn’t know about them, and he imagined that he’d never show her. They were more for his benefit. Through them, he could make sense of how he felt for her, and where their relationship stood during each particular Christmas.

Toni Morrison’s  _Beloved,_  given during that first, miserable Christmas, was telling: he missed her, and he had nothing more than the echoes of her to live off.

The following Christmas was better: they were reconciled and thriving after a tumultuous year of working their way back from the fallout of the Black Hood, and he gifted her with his own worn copy of  _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows._  Jughead had fond memories of him and Betty sitting quietly in his old treehouse, reading the  _Harry Potter_  series together while Archie played with all the other kids in the neighbourhood. At age 12, they raced each other to the end of the series, and debated endlessly about that last sentence (Betty liked it; Jughead thought it was silly and a wasted opportunity).

On Christmas Day that year, he rolled a piece of paper into the Underwood and wrote:

_Horcruxes are made out to be this awful, terrible thing in the novel, but in real life, are we not always giving our souls away to different things and different people? This year, I’ve felt mine being stitched back together after all the fracturing that happened last year. And while small pieces of it remain unaccounted for, I can say this wholeheartedly today: so much of it belongs to you, Betty Cooper._

In the Christmas before they went off to college, he gave her a copy of Homer’s  _Odyssey._ Betty was off to Columbia, while he had been accepted to Amherst. Within five minutes of receiving his letter in the mail, he had already mapped out the distance between the two colleges, and calculated the time that it would take for him to drive up to New York during the weekends. They had dreamt of going to college together, but it was not meant to be. That being said, a mere 4-hour drive between Boston and New York on the weekends was the next best thing, and they spent many of their Saturdays over the next four years driving between the two campuses and spending nights at each other’s dorm rooms.

Betty loved his present, saying that Homer’s  _Odyssey_  was a quintessential college reading experience. While he agreed with her, that wasn’t the reason he got her the book that year.

In his letter, he wrote, _You would think that Odysseus’ story would centre on his heroic role in the Trojan War, in the Iliad, but no: we remember him instead for The Odyssey, for his journey home. For all the hype that Amherst has for me, with my old man proud as punch that I’d be the first in the family to attend college, all I can think of right now is that four-hour drive to New York, climbing the steps up to your dorm room, and knocking on your door. College is my Trojan War, but the true quest for me is the journey home to you._

And on and on it continued, every single year. Jack Kerouac’s  _On The Road,_ right before they embarked on an epic road trip to Austin for SXSW. Annie Proulx’s  _The Shipping News_  the year that she interned for The New York Times. Paulo Coelho’s _The Alchemis_ t when she was struggling with her studies and contemplating switching majors.

Each one was accompanied with a letter that she never saw, carefully typed on Christmas Day and tucked away into the secret box in his room. After he wrote each one, he always briefly contemplated sending them all to her. But to do so would be to break tradition, and if he was to do that, he decided that it would have to be for a very special reason.

…

“I don’t get a book this year?”

Jughead was at the Coopers’ House on Christmas Eve, dropping off presents for the family. Alice and Hal had slowly accepted him into the fold over the past ten years, and this year, he felt more welcome than ever to their home. Betty was pouting at the door as she was seeing him off.

“I’m sorry, love,” Jughead said, kissing her on the temple. “Stupid Amazon couldn’t deliver it on time. Apparently it’s in demand.”

Betty eyed him curiously. “A book that’s in demand  _this time of year_? So… either a new release or some sort of Christmas tale.” She looked triumphant.

“Oh, come on, don’t try to guess. You’ll probably end up figuring it out.”

“Alright then,” she said, tiptoeing to put her arms around his neck. “You’ll be okay to drive home? The roads are a bit icy.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” he leaned down to kiss her, then remembered something. “By the way, did you get everything in to Trish for that  _Lilith_  end-of-year review?” Betty had just become the news editor for _Lilith,_ an alternative online news and culture website aimed towards young women, and she was thriving, making Jughead proud. She deserved it.

“Ugh. Yes. Believe me, if I see another listicle in this lifetime, I might throw it all in and just run the Riverdale Register.” Jughead chuckled at that. “What about you? Did you have to run anything like that for  _Slate_?”

“No, thank god,” he said. “And somehow, I don’t think anyone wants to see a Top Ten True Crimes list.”

She laughed. “You never know.”

“That’s true,” he said. “I mean, you and I would read it.”

“Yes, but that’s because we grew up in this town.” They both laughed at that. Among many things, Riverdale had gifted them with a macabre sense of humour.

“Alright,” he said. “I better get going. I’ll see you at lunch at ours tomorrow?”

“Yes. Also, you’re 100% sure that Jellybean would like the scarf?”

“Absolutely.” He smiled and gave her a last kiss. “Love you.”

“Love you, Jug.”

He walked down to his car and got in, waving at Betty as he drove off. As soon as he turned a corner, he pulled over and called Archie.

“Jug.”

“Hey, Arch. Coast clear?”

“Yep. She just went in. You’re good to go.”

…

At five minutes to midnight, right before Christmas Day, Jughead stood outside Betty’s window.

Snow was starting to fall. He tucked Betty’s Christmas present into his jacket to try and protect it from damage - the one he got her in lieu of a book that year. It  _was_ a book, technically, but not quite yet. It was yet to be published. 

Jughead couldn’t help it: he had to look at the manuscript cover again. Just this once. Just so he could believe that this was actually happening.

_“Of Bulldogs, Serpents and Vixens._ A novel by Jughead Jones.”

After so many years of trying (and failing) to pick up from where he left off with his novel, Jughead had spent the past six months smashing it out on his typewriter like a man possessed by the Muses. His  _Slate_ editor, Rick, was positively aghast that he was insisting on the typewritten manuscript (“The fact that there is no soft copy of this is giving me hives, Jughead. HIVES!”), but he was firm: the novel would be written on the Underwood, or not at all.

He hadn’t told Betty about the novel. When he started working on it again, the words flowed too fast that he knew that stopping and showing her would only disrupt his momentum. And in her ignorance, he sensed an opportunity.

Jughead looked down at his watch. Two minutes to go.

He was excited to give Betty his manuscript, but it was only one out of the three presents he was planning to give her that night. As nerve-wracking as it was to give her the manuscript, he was actually more nervous about his second gift. Looking up at her window, he saw it propped up on the seat, wrapped with a large red bow. 

He had bribed Polly’s twins (with an obscene amount of money - they were crafty Blossoms, after all) to take his box of Christmas letters into Betty’s room after she fell asleep, and to place it neatly on her window seat - the very same one he had stepped onto all those years ago, when he first kissed her.  Before handing it over, he made sure that the letters were in the correct order - chronological, with the newest one at the bottom of the pile. He wanted her to read that one last.

He had the letter typed for weeks now, as soon as he had finished the first draft of his manuscript. Unlike the other Christmas letters, which usually took him upwards of an hour to write, this one was written quickly, as if the words were in him all along.

_Betty,_

_This is the gift I wanted to give you this year – the manuscript for my novel, the story I’d been writing since our teens._

_It’s the story of our town - or, at least, it started out that way. In the past few months, as each chapter poured out of me as quickly as the rapids of the Sweetwater current, I realised that the story of Riverdale as I saw it was actually_ OUR  _story. Of our childhood, of the tenuous beginnings of our relationship, of the rollercoaster it endured, and of how we were brought back together by the sheer force of our love for one another._

_I’ve given you a book each Christmas because I felt as though my words were not enough to express how much I felt for you. But that all changed this year as I gained the inspiration to commit this all to paper, using the typewriter that YOU gave me._

_Which is a beautiful metaphor, don’t you think? It is YOU who gives me the words, who inspires me to write, to create._

_This won’t be your last book from me. Tradition demands that I continue to give you one every Christmas. But this is, I believe, the most important one._

_This is me asking you to come with me on a new journey, to write a new chapter in our lives together._

_To fill the next pages of this book. With new memories, new stories, perhaps even new characters._

_With more of us._

He looked up again at the window.

It really was the perfect spot - symbolic, and practical. His heart started beating faster when he saw the light switch on. The twins were probably bouncing on their aunt’s bed now, screaming that it was Christmas, asking her to open the present on her window seat.

He looked down at his phone. Right on cue, a message came through from Archie.  _Lights are ready to come on, when you’re ready._

Jughead inhaled sharply, the cold air invigorating him with courage. Hopefully, while sitting there, as she read that final letter, she could see him outside, surrounded by the fairy lights he had set up earlier in the week.

Kneeling in the snow. Holding his third present - the small box inside his jacket pocket.

Asking her to marry him. 


End file.
